How to access plugin icons from cpp?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am developping a maya plugin in cpp and store it in the standard structure <resource path>/plug-ins and pictures into <resource path>/icons.

However when I want to display a picture (qt/cpp development) and enter just the picture name, the picture is not displayed. I there need to use an absolute path.

But as I plan to put this plugin on different computers, how can I programmatically know when the pictures are located ?

Thanks.

[RFlannery1 · Accepted solution]

One option to consider is to package your plugin into a "module".  It has a pre-defined folder structure.  If you use this method, you will be able to determine the path of the icons relative to the .mll file.  This becomes an even better option if you also have MEL scripts that go along with the plug-in.

Maya documentation: Distributing Multi-File Modules

Another option is to embed the icons into a resource file.  I'm not sure exactly how this works, since I haven't done it before, but here is a page describing the general idea: The Qt Resource System

[Anonymous]

You can query default location of user images and icons using MEL command internalVar

MString path;
MGlobal::executeCommand( "internalVar -userBitmapsDir",  path);

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately this mel command gives me the following path:

/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2015-x64/prefs/icons/

When I was expecting the path where the current plugin is located.

[Anonymous]

Worked like a charm, thanks.
Used the following cpp command:
MString path;
MGlobal::executeCommand("getModulePath -moduleName MayaTest", path);